Colourblind
by piloqutinnguaq
Summary: He wonders how life would look through those rose-coloured glasses.


Sakura's hands are shaking behind her back. They're clasped together in the soldier stance and she looks as though she is awaiting orders, but they shake. Kakashi decides that any comforting gesture will only embarrass her.

He wants to reach out. He digs his nails into his arm.

"I believe that Uchiha Sasuke can be reformed," she tells the council. They peer down over their pedestals in their great black cloaks, vulture faces and glowing eyes. Kakashi hates them with the same vicious anger he saves for Uchiha Sasuke.

"Your opinion is deeply valued," the council leader says. The Hokage seat is empty still. They haven't had the ceremony yet. Kakashi didn't look at Sakura when he testified because he was afraid of what she might think of him.

Sakura bows and she is dismissed. As she passes by him, Kakashi reaches out to let their hands brush together, they way they used to before missions. She pulls away and he grasps the air.

He used to think Sakura saw the world through rose coloured glasses. She had the enduring optimism of a young romantic. She was effortlessly happy and endlessly hopeful and that was the thing he loved most about her. Kakashi knows, after healing Sasuke's broken body and truly seeing his broken mind, that those glasses are broken too.

Sakura is colourblind.

* * *

"Can I see him? Please Sakura-chan!"

Naruto wails like a child and pouts like a toddler. He is cartoonish and surreal and Kakashi wonders how he ever got used to these displays of immaturity from a man preparing to lead a nation.

A frown flashes across Sakura's face and then she smiles politely. Kakashi knows that she is lying when she smiles like that. "He's mostly asleep, Naruto. It wouldn't be worthwhile. We should let him rest."

_We should kill him_, Kakashi thinks to himself. He knows what Sasuke says and does when left alone with his personal doctor, a woman who gave up her career as a ninja to restore his health. A woman who has loved him through a decade of betrayal. A better woman than any of them deserve.

"We can go for ramen," Kakashi says, "And talk about how to run the treasuries. That's important stuff, you know."

Naruto is sidetracked by his impending promotion. Kakashi takes him under a literal wing as they walk away toward Ichiraku and Sakura mouths thank you. He says nothing and he hopes that his mask disguises how much he loves her.

They both know she cannot keep up her lie forever. Kakashi feels sick and he doesn't eat any of the ramen. He watches Naruto eat it instead and remembers how Sakura used to scold him. She doesn't eat with them anymore.

* * *

Kakashi watched Uchiha Sasuke as he healed, sat in the corner of the private hospital room while the machines blared out a steady pulse, enraptured by the horror of his injuries. It was three months before they risked bringing him out of a medically induced coma. His eyes snapped open, red pinwheels spinning, the seventh circle of hell reflected in the gaze of a boy—not yet a man.

Kakashi did not visit him again after that. He stood vigil outside the door. He carried Sakura home after late night healing sessions. He held her in his arms while she mercilessly sobbed over a merciless boy, not yet a man, who did nothing but sleep, eat, and spit venom. There was nothing in that room but death, the long voyage down.

"You never visited me," Uchiha Sasuke says when he finally decides to enter. It is the seventh month since his return and the trial is finished and Naruto has become Hokage, but some things never change. Sasuke's face is guileless.

"I didn't want to," Kakashi replies. His voice is perfectly even.

"I thought you would," Sasuke adds tonelessly, shifting blame. Kakashi thinks he must be good at that. How could he live with himself otherwise?

He thinks about how easy it would be to kill him. Uchiha Sasuke keeps his sharingan engaged, but that is more for intimidation than anything else. His limbs are weak and pale from disuse and Kakashi knows that his spine was irreparably damaged.

There is a small spark of empathy in his chest for the lost little boy in the hospital bed—the one he saw covered in the blood of his clan and the one he sees now wasting away in self-made chains.

"I am going to walk again," Sasuke says, as if he guesses Kakashi's train of thought. "Sakura will do it."

It isn't an accolade or even a compliment. Sasuke throws away her name, as if he is saying _I know she will do the dishes_. The little spark wavers sharply.

"You're going to go blind," Kakashi says blandly. Sasuke blinks but his sharignan remains. It is spinning and spinning, further and further into the fires of the underworld.

He wonders, if he blinded the little boy covered in the blood of his clan, could he have saved all of their souls?

Sasuke does not reply and Kakashi does not know what else to say. He walks out of the room and he never returns. He promises himself that the next time he is admitted to the hospital, he will never come back. He does not want Sakura to spend her life wasting away beside him.

He knows that she wouldn't, anyway. Her heart belongs to another.

* * *

He didn't intend to find her, but as Kakashi wanders closer and closer to her office, he scans the uniforms for her ostentatious hair. It doesn't appear, so he begins to look for her chakra. Sakura is hiding in the supply closet. Kakashi knocks on the door.

"I'm fine," she answers.

"Sakura-chan," he says, opening the door anyway. She wipes away the evidence of her self-pity and he remembers when she was young and her make up used to run on missions. He told her that ninjas don't need make up and she showed up fresh-faced and newly confident the next day. She bounced back again and again and maybe mid-swing she got tired.

"I just needed a minute," she waves him off with a cool and casual hand.

"You should take the day off. You've been pushing yourself too hard."

"That's awfully funny coming from you, Kakashi-sensei."

Maybe one day she would snap back to Sakura, hair shining, smile wide, ready to brutalize a missing-nin and cure sick civilian children. The Sakura he fell in love with, all those years ago. The distance in her words is palpable and it stings.

"Well, I don't want you to make the same mistakes."

For a moment, he thinks that she might cry. He braces himself and comforting words well up in his throat.

"Thanks for checking on me," she says instead, polite smile fixed on her face. Kakashi feels his heart collapse. Sakura lets their hands brush together as she walks by, but it's only their gloves that touch. She walks back into Uchiha Sasuke's hospital room, where he is nearly able to walk. After only a year of recovery, it is a medical miracle.

Kakashi doesn't take another suicidal mission. He waits outside for her, slowly wasting away. When she falls asleep and her chakra is low, he carries her home. He cries once, alone, and then he accepts his self-made prison. Still, he tortures himself. He wonders, when he sees Sasuke on the street, Sakura following him with a polite smile, how life would look through those rose coloured glasses.


End file.
